Explore Quotes on Theatre

I have always been very fond of them (drama critics) . . . I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it.

To maintain one's individuality, integrity, and true personality in the theatre is a big task.

Life beats down and crushes our souls and theatre reminds us that we have one. At least the type of theatre that I'm interested in; that is, theatre that moves an audience. You have the opportunity to literally impact the lives of people if they work on material that has integrity. But today, most actors simply want to be famous. Well, being an actor was never supposed to be about fame and money. Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition.

There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn't have anybody to look down on.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.

Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength.

The novel is more of a whisper, whereas the stage is a shout.

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.

The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subject to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees, the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors but as their superiors.

No, my step-daughter just opened a theatre school for children, I have another daughter who works in the record industry and another who is going back to collage and I have two little ones at home.

My parents started with very little and were the only ones in their families to graduate from college. As parents, they focused on education, but did not stop at academics - they made sure that we knew music, saw art and theatre and traveled - even though it meant budgeting like crazy.

[May 1958, on playing Macbeth at age 30 and age 48] When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.

Speech is the mirror of action.

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

You ask my advice about acting? Speak clearly, don't bump into the furniture and if you must have motivation, think of your pay packet on Friday.

Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

I went to school, majored in theatre, and said 'Mom, I have to choose my own destiny. I want to be an actor.' A couple of weeks after I graduated college I called my mother up and said 'Can I borrow $200?' and she said 'Why don't you act like you've got $200.'

In my plays I want to look at life at the commonplace of existence as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.

Now I'm seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It's gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I'm scared I might be a celebrity.